How to make a certificate to print

To make a certificate to print, open Publish by Zaweba and start from one of its two built-in certificate templates. Change the recipient's name, the reason for the award and the date, then print it through the Windows print dialog or export a PDF to print elsewhere. The app is free, offline and needs no account.

Certificates are a small job that's easy to get slightly wrong. The name needs to be the star, the wording needs to be short, and the whole thing has to sit squarely on the paper. A template takes care of the balance so you only deal with the words.

Picking a starting point

When you create a new publication, choose one of the two certificate templates. Look at both before you commit, because one may suit a formal award and the other a fun one for a school sports day or a club quiz. Everything in the template is editable: text boxes, borders, shapes and colours.

If you'd rather build from nothing, a blank A4 page in landscape is the usual shape for a certificate. Set generous margins, add a border with a rectangle or rounded rectangle shape, and build the text up from there.

Changing the words

Click into each text box and type over the sample text. Keep the name larger than everything else. If you want the heading to look grand, Insert > WordArt offers eight styles, including classic serif and elegant italic, and the result stays real text you can edit and correct later.

Paragraph styles help if you're making several certificates. Set the heading and body styles once, and every certificate you make from the same file looks consistent. If you want to change a colour across the whole design, the document palette of named colours updates everywhere at once, and the Format menu's colour schemes and font schemes restyle the lot in one go.

A signature line is available under Insert > Page parts, along with other ready-made pieces such as a banner heading. Page parts arrive centred in the margins, grouped, and in the document's colours, so they fit the rest of the design.

Making a batch of named certificates

If you need a certificate for every child in a class or every member of a team, mail merge saves a lot of retyping. Tools > Mail merge reads a CSV file with a column of names. Click into the name box, click the column to put its field there, preview record by record, then export one merged PDF or print merged. Each certificate comes out with its own name.

A spreadsheet saved as CSV is enough. The first row must be the column names.

Printing it well

Printing goes through the normal Windows print dialog. Publish prints at actual size, centred, and only scales down if the paper is smaller than the page, so an A4 certificate on A4 paper comes out the size you designed it.

For a certificate on thick card from a print shop, export a print-ready PDF instead. It includes bleed from the document, crop marks, embedded fonts and full-resolution pictures. If the design has colour running to the edge, set some bleed in the page setup so the printer can trim cleanly. Colour is RGB only.

Before printing a stack, print one on plain paper and hold it at arm's length. Check the name spelling, the date and whether anything sits too close to the edge. Then load the good card.

Save the file as an .ozp and you'll have it ready for next term's awards with only the names to change.